No one's claiming it's an authority. It spit out the scientific facts of our sight system.

My claim remains, and is entirely untouched by what you've presented (which is fine, i'm not claiming AI is an authority on anything but presenting established information, such as how our sight system works).

was to demonstrate prevarication on its part, not to elicit an argument for Direct Realism. — Banno

Understood. I disagree what it did was prevaricate, though. Its entirely sensible, given the claim it is addressing. Massaged inputs are probably worse than open-ended questions.

But your point (and its a fair one, generally) equally applies to old philosophers. Including Austin, who, if he is taken at his word(according to your representations), isn't even addressing this distinction correctly, given he's not talking about the difference 'direct' and 'indirect' actually captures wrt realism. However, I've yet to read S&S so refrain from committing to any comment like that. Its just illustrating the same problem you see with using AI for x purpose.

The crux remains unascended.

However, if we're going to amend these accounts of words to incorporate useful delineations, then we 'perceive' directly the representations which we are 'seeing' indirectly, as a result of 'looking at' a object. This seems to cover all three positions presented, and doesn't disturb the empirical facts. An Indirect Realist would see themselves in this, as would a Direct Realist in the way Banno is putting forward that 'seeing' is, in fact, an indirect activity of hte mind regarding an object, and no of an object. I'm quite happy with this, personally, pending any substantial problems being pointed out.

Where does the perceiver end and the mediator begin, in your analysis? In my thinking the perceiver and your mediator, the visual system, are one and the same. Essentially this means there is no mediator. It’s all perceiver.

The first argument presented in the OP is pretty much one of Ayer's arguments, as addressed by Austin. The counters I presented to the others derive from Austin addressing Ayer.

Come on, you know everything I write is derivative.

hehe… well, I’m getting there

The back of the house presents itself to you — Jamal

...has intimations of intent on the part of the back of the house. — Banno

I like it for that reason, but I’m struggling to justify it. I think it’s to do with an ecological, relational, reciprocal sort of idea of perception. Or the idea that the back of the house is independent of you, which can be hinted at by metaphorically ascribing agency to it. Your mind doesn’t present it; it presents itself. It’s already there, waiting (to pounce on your eyeballs).

Maybe you can help @Janus? Why do you and I want to say, and why do some phenomenologists say, that the things we perceive present themselves to us? I feel I’m missing something obvious.

What even is that way of speaking? :chin:

I don't agree that they are equivalent. Naive realism is pre-scientific realism, — Janus

I agree the terms aren't equivalent, though they do have strong similarities. As the article Recent Work on Naive Realism by James Genone points out:

Naïve Realism is sometimes thought to be synonymous with ‘direct realism’ or ‘common sense realism’.................Nevertheless, this terminological ambiguity can be a source of
confusion.

===============================================================================

As organism we are part of the world, each organism sees the world directly via its perceptual apparatus—there is no question of distortion, no need to invoke indirectness — Janus

Suppose that there is a straight stick in a glass of water. We may perceive a bent stick sitting in a glass of water, yet can reason in our minds that the stick is in fact straight.

You say "each organism sees the world directly" It depends what you mean by "see". The word "see" can have several meanings. It could be literal as in "I see in my visual field a bright light", or it could be a figure of speech as in "I see your future, and it looks promising"

In a literal sense, "I see in my visual field a bent stick". As a figure of speech "I see in my mind a straight stick".

On the one hand "I see a bent stick" and on the other hand "I see a straight stick".

Both sentences are truth apt, but whether true or false depends on the meaning of the words used.

Saying "I see Mars" is in effect saying that the photons which cause me to recognize that I am seeing Mars were reflected by Mars. — wonderer1

Yes, "I see Mars" is a figure of speech meaning "the photons which cause me to recognize that I am seeing Mars were reflected by Mars, travelling an average distance of 225 million km through space and taking between 3 and 22 minutes dependent upon the positions of the planets, meaning that I am not directly seeing photons from Mars as it is now but as it was in the past"

A figure of speech may be thought of as "is in effect saying".

I don't actually find the first two arguments in my OP that good. By that I mean that it's still compatible with Direct Realism. I just gave them to see what others would think.

Direct or indirect realism isn't epistemology, recall, they're philosophies of perception. — jkop

Disagree. Indirect and Direct Realism are part of epistemology.

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. It is concerned with the mind’s relation to reality. What is it for this relation to be one of knowledge? Do we know things? And if we do, how and when do we know things?

(www.sheffield.ac.uk/)

While not without critics, direct realism forms a substantial part of epistemological theories, and it is important to understand both the arguments for and against this perspective.

(https: //studyrocket.co.uk)
===============================================================================

As long as the assumption is that you never see things directly, then skepticism follows. Not so for the direct realist. — jkop

I think everyone should be sceptical, whether the Indirect or Direct Realist. Who wants to unquestionably believe everything they are told.

As the Merriam Webster Dictionary writes:
Scepticism = 1) an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object 2a) the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain 2b) the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics 3) doubt concerning basic religious principles (such as immortality, providence, and revelation).

Philosophers in particular should practice scepticism, including the Direct Realists.

"I see Mars" is a figure of speech meaning "the photons which cause me to recognize that I am seeing Mars — RussellA

I note the recursion.

If “I see mars” is a figure of speech “I am seeing mars” can’t be what it symbolises without an endless circle of self-referential justification.

I note the recursion. If “I see mars” is a figure of speech “I am seeing mars” can’t be what it symbolises without an endless circle of self-referential justification. — AmadeusD

In the Present Simple tense I can say "I see Mars every evening in the night sky". In the Present Continuous tense I can then ask the question "how do I know that I am seeing Mars rather than Venus?"

I don't think that this is where the infinite regress is.

The homunculus problem arises because of a confusion about the relationship between "I" and "the image".

An object in the world such as an apple is not a Platonic Form floating around separate to its properties, such as is green, is circular and is sweet. If there were no properties then there would be no object.

Similarly, "I" is not a Platonic Form floating around the world separate to its properties, of which "image" would be one.

Internal to "I" must be "the image", otherwise "I" couldn't be conscious of it. If "the image" was external to "I", then "I" couldn't know about it in the first place.

"The image" is not separate to "I", and as circular is a property of the object apple, the image is a property of "I". The "image" is part of what makes "I".

IE, if "I see a red dot", where a red dot is an image, part of what gives "I" an identity is the image, in this case the image of a red dot.

There is no infinite regression.

I feel I’m missing something obvious. — Jamal

How objects present themselves is a hobby horse of mine. I think worldly constituents are construed as "presenting themselves" as they're already part of the world. You do a thing with them and that somehow reveals their nature in the act. Like I discover how heavy my dumbbell is by lifting it.

There's a puzzle, because the "heaviness" of the dumbbell is in fact a relational property - a property of how I lift the dumbbell, rather than of the dumbbell itself or of my body. That's the theme of reciprocal "co-constitution" in Heidegger, but it is similar to time and space properties being ideal in Kant. The term marks an uneasy tension between the discoverability of the world's structure and the judgements which parse that structure in acts of discovery. How could the dumbbell be heavy if heaviness is a property of how I act upon the dumbbell?

Environmental objects "presenting themselves" I think is a means to suggest that environmental objects are active in the environment, not just acted upon. But it's difficult to conceive that an object can principally determine how it is interacted with when the means of conceptualising and enacting that interaction is ideal and agential. I gotta pick the dumbbell up to know it's heavy. Would it be heavy in the absence of humans?

To my ears, then, construing the world as "presenting itself" is supposed to efficiently connote that the world's nature is autonomous, but what its nature is revealed as is dependent upon us. I think it's a means of saying that objects have a capacity to affect us regardless of our ability to apply concepts to them or those means of affecting.

Whether you can coherently think of the object as autonomous in its capacities to affect us while placing the means by which its nature is revealed as an interaction involving an agent is an issue which clouds all that. Which is a question of whether objects transcendentally condition interaction with them based on their properties. And I suppose whether it's even appropriate to think of that conditioning as "transcendental" in the first place!

To my ears, then, construing the world as "presenting itself" is supposed to efficiently connote that the world's nature is autonomous, but what its nature is revealed as is dependent upon us. I think it's a means of saying that objects have a capacity to affect us regardless of our ability to apply concepts to them or those means of affecting — fdrake

You remind me of Lee Braver here, whose Transgressive Realism uses Kierkegaard as a means to reconcile Levinas and Heidegger.

Lately, I've become interested in these moments of revolutionary experience, when our whole sense of what the world is like gets turned inside out and we are forced to form entirely new concepts to process what is happening. According to what I am calling Transgressive Realism these are the paradigmatic points of contact with a reality unformed by human concepts, when a true beyond touches us, sending shivers through our conceptual schemes, shaking us out of any complacent feeling-at-home

Whether you can coherently think of the object as autonomous in its capacities to affect us while placing the means by which its nature is revealed as an interaction involving an agent is an issue which clouds all that. Which is a question of whether objects transcendentally condition interaction with them based on their properties. — fdrake

Do you gravitate toward the alternative way of thinking according to which objects transcendentally condition interaction with an agent in a manner neither entirely separable from the nature of the schemes they condition, nor logically derivable from them?

Do you gravitate toward the alternative way of thinking according to which objects transcendentally condition interaction with an agent in a manner neither entirely separable from the nature of the schemes they condition, nor logically derivable from them? — Joshs

For the past while I've been interested in how schemes are generated rather than thinking about how changes shake already formed ones up. But I imagine that's quite off topic.

Great stuff.

Whether you can coherently think of the object as autonomous in its capacities to affect us while placing the means by which its nature is revealed as an interaction involving an agent is an issue which clouds all that. Which is a question of whether objects transcendentally condition interaction with them based on their properties. — fdrake

There is no shame in hitting the wall of paralogisms and antinomies. Or maybe there is.

There is no shame in hitting the wall of paralogisms and antinomies. — Jamal

"We (the undivided divinity operating within us) have dreamt the world. We have dreamt it as firm, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and durable in time; but in its architecture we have allowed tenuous and eternal crevices of unreason which tell us it is false." — Borges, Avatars of the Tortoise

I suppose there's a question of whether the limitation in thought is mine or thought's...

For the past while I've been interested in how schemes are generated rather than thinking about how changes shake already formed ones up — fdrake

I would think they were the same question. Cognitive schemes , as manifestations of living systems, only function by making changes in themselves. Genesis and structure are not separate features, although we can artificially separate them for convenience sake.

How objects present themselves is a hobby horse of mine.................Like I discover how heavy my dumbbell is by lifting it. — fdrake

We know that a rose is heavier than a mosquito and lighter than a pebble, because a human can discover this by lifting them.

Heavier and lighter can only exist as relations between objects.

If there were never humans, would a rose be heavier than a mosquito and lighter than a pebble? If yes, what would be the ontological nature of relations?

I would think they were the same question. Cognitive schemes , as manifestations of living systems, only function by making changes in themselves. Genesis and structure are not separate features, although we can artificially separate them for convenience sake. — Joshs

The posit that they're the same question, or indeed have any kind of dyadic relation, is precisely the kind of structural presupposition which should be held in suspension IMO. I think if you come at that distinction from phenomenology you end up pissing reciprocal co-constitution everywhere and thus take the co-constitution as an unexaminable given. Rather than as an a contingent observation made of human bodies. Truth be told I don't trust that the distinction between genesis and structure is a good one because it's a dyad of mutually presupposing terms.

But that co-constitution becomes examinable if you stop thinking of humans solely as agents and more as insatiable and dying bags of meat, living and dying experiments in a world which does not welcome them and is not their own. Becoming-meatbag is something I appreciate in Ratcliffe ("Experiences of Depression") and Scarry ("The Body In Pain"), they really get into how the soul is a story told by idiot meat. Meat which must also be treated as human.

Heavier and lighter can only exist as relations between objects. — RussellA

Yes. Arguably they're different flavours of relation though, innit.

If there were never humans, would a rose be heavier than a mosquito and lighter than a pebble? If yes, what would be the ontological nature of relations? — RussellA

Aye. Something like "the rock transfers more energy to the ground than a grain of sand upon collision" doesn't involve an agent. Except insofar as the judgement can be thought of as the result of an agent's appraisal of a situation. I'm inclined to think that the relationship between an agent and a dumbbell which affords the dumbbell with heaviness is the same flavour of thing as the relationship between the rock and the grain of sand's impact - that is, principally material and agent independent, even if agents are somehow involved in the events or their articulation!

Something like "the rock transfers more energy to the ground than a grain of sand upon collision" doesn't involve an agent. — fdrake

A rock falls and hits the ground, which increases in temperature of the ground by x deg. A grain of sand falls and hits the ground, which increases the temperature of the ground by y deg.

It is true that x and y don't require a human agent. The sticking point is "more than", in that "x is more than y".

How is the human concept "more than" expressed in a world absent of any human agent?

The posit that they're the same question, or indeed have any kind of dyadic relation, is precisely the kind of structural presupposition which should be held in suspension IMO. I think if you come at that distinction from phenomenology you end up pissing reciprocal co-constitution everywhere and thus take the co-constitution as an unexaminable given. Rather than as an a contingent observation made of human bodies…Becoming-meatbag is something I appreciate in Ratcliffe ("Experiences of Depression") and Scarry ("The Body In Pain"), they really get into how the soul is a story told by idiot meat — fdrake

I wouldn’t say it s a structural presupposition for Piaget, auto-poietic systems theory or embodied, enactivist cognitive science. For them it is something that can be demonstrated empirically. Merleau-Ponty shows elegantly how we can conceive it either as a philosophical a priori or as an empirical result , depending on which hat we wear.
Ratcliffe address the question of

whether one form of inquiry ultimately has some kind of priority over the other. It could be maintained that the two address different but complementary questions. Alternatively, one might adopt a stance of agnoticism, a ‘wait-and-see' policy. Another position, currently very popular in the philosophy of mind and other areas, is the sort of ‘scientific naturalism' or ‘scientism' that gives empirical science metaphysical and epistemological priority over all other forms of human inquiry. But contrary to scientific naturalism is a position that appears, in slightly different guises, in the work of numerous phenomenologists, including Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. They maintain that phenomenology has priority over science. In brief, scientific conceptions of things are abstractions, which depend for their intelligibility on the everyday experiential reality studied by phenomenology, in much the same way that a road map depends upon a road system. Here is how Merleau-Ponty puts it:

The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression. . . . To return to things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge always speaks, and in relation to which every scientific schematization is an abstract and derivative sign-language, as is geography in relation to the countryside in which we have learnt beforehand what a forest, a prairie, or a river is. (1962, viii–ix)

This kind of position is not ‘anti-science'; it is an account of the nature and role of science. And it allows that science can still inform phenomenol-ogy, in various important ways. However, it does give phenomenology a kind of primacy over science, insofar as the subject matter of the former is presupposed by the intelligibility of the latter. It is therefore opposed to metaphysical and epistemological scientism, but compatible with weaker conceptions of naturalism that require only commerce and consistency between phenomenology and science. I suggest that this last conception of the phenomenology–science relationship applies to at least some uses of phenomenology in psychiatry: to adequately explore alternative ways of being in the world, one must first recognize the contingency of a way of being in the world that the intelligibility of empirical science depends on. Given this first step, it is incompatible with strong forms of naturalism. It follows that any attempt to characterize phenomenology solely in terms of how it can assist empirical scientific inquiry will fail to acknowledge an important and distinctive role that it has to play in psychiatry.

However, it does give phenomenology a kind of primacy over science, insofar as the subject matter of the former is presupposed by the intelligibility of the latter. It is therefore opposed to metaphysical and epistemological scientism, but compatible with weaker conceptions of naturalism that require only commerce and consistency between phenomenology and science.

Aye I read that book. Rethinking Commonsense Psychology right? I agree with him broadly. But I do think he ends up privileging the human a lot, and intentionally. You can go into the existential aspects of any mental illness you like phenomenologically, and it'll help clear up some things. Especially insofar as you have pre-theoretical concepts masquerading as neuroscientific or clinical ones (he's really good on this). His mode of analysis doesn't have much to say about those people who can be successfully medicated away from mental health conditions - which is a change in material substrate, a body, inducing a change in the phenomenology of embodiment. That isn't his concern principally, and he's very much fighting against (a perception of) a reduction of embodiment to body.

In quotes like that he does rather sound like the nth iteration of a Heideggerian critique of natural science, albeit one usually written without jargon. When he switches into that mode I think he loses what's really novel in his approach! A phenomenology with no primacy of the existential over the material. He absolutely uses that non-reductive connection elsewhere [correlating neurotransmitter activity with mood changes if I recall correctly in Experiences of Depression, but I'm not convinced my memory holds up there].

Basically it's good when he behaves like there really is no primacy of one style of inquiry over the other, and it frustrates me when he collapses back into the usual phenomenology tropes.

We could have a thread on this instead. I'm going to stop responding now.

Maybe you can help Janus? Why do you and I want to say, and why do some phenomenologists say, that the things we perceive present themselves to us? I feel I’m missing something obvious. — Jamal

It's a good question. I'm not convinced that speaking of things presenting themselves to us necessarily invokes agency on their part. Well at least not agency in the sense of intention to present themselves. In the context of chemistry agency is spoken about—we say there are chemical agents, defined as those compounds or admixtures which have toxic effects on humans.

While things don't have the intention to present themselves, they could be said to have the propensity to do so. Language is multivalent. We can speak of things presenting themselves or being presented or being or becoming present to us.

I don't know if I've answered the question adequately but that's all I've got right now.

On the one hand "I see a bent stick" and on the other hand "I see a straight stick". — RussellA

For me a more accurate way of expressing that thought would be "I see a straight stick that appears bent". I see no cause for confusion in that—I've never seen the supposed problem for realism in the 'bent stick' argument.

Now when I said, above "I see no problem" that is obviously just a different sense of 'see'. We have been dealing with the visual sense of the word, and I don't think it is going to help to bring in other senses of 'see'.

It seems to me that phenomenology, like any other form of investigation, is as secondary and derivative of primal, non-dual experience as science. I think talk of one domain of inquiry having priority over another is wrongheaded from the get-go.

Maybe you can help Janus? Why do you and I want to say, and why do some phenomenologists say, that the things we perceive present themselves to us? I feel I’m missing something obvious. — Jamal

Something obvious to me is how much is not being talked about with a statement like "Things we perceive present themselves to us." There are a lot of details that might be understood, that are seemingly brushed under the rug with such a statement.

I'd be curious as to what connotations "present" has in this context and how those connotations might contrast with a scientific view on the matter.

Why do you and I want to say, and why do some phenomenologists say, that the things we perceive present themselves to us? I feel I’m missing something obvious. — Jamal

I dont know why you want to say that , but I can tell you that in Husserl’s phenomenology objects don’t just appear to a subject as what they are in themselves in all their assumed completeness, but are constituted by the subject through intentional acts. This means they present themselves to the subject within some mode of givenness. For instance, an object can be given in the mode of recollection, imagination or perception. Within spatial perception, we never see the whole object in front of us; the object gives, or presents, itself to us in only one perspectival aspect at a time. So what we understand as the object as a unitary whole is never given to us in its entirety. This abstract unity is transcendent to what we actually experience.

I dont know why you want to say that , but I can tell you that in Husserl’s phenomenology objects don’t just appear to a subject as what they are in themselves in all their assumed completeness, but are constituted by the subject through intentional acts. — Joshs

That's one way of putting it. Another would be that things present whatever it is possible to present of themselves to percipients, depending on their own constitutions, the environmental conditions and, of course the constitutions of the percipients, Framing this interactive process in terms of intentionality tends to yield a one-sided picture in my view.

I dont know why you want to say that , but I can tell you that in Husserl’s phenomenology objects don’t just appear to a subject as what they are in themselves in all their assumed completeness, but are constituted by the subject through intentional acts. This means they present themselves to the subject within some mode of givenness. For instance, an object can be given in the mode of recollection, imagination or perception. Within spatial perception, we never see the whole object in front of us; the object gives, or presents, itself to us in only one perspectival aspect at a time. So what we understand as the object as a unitary whole is never given to us in its entirety. This abstract unity is transcendent to what we actually experience. — Joshs

Nice summary. I was—or @Banno was—hung up on the connoted attribution of agency to an object that “presents itself.” It wasn’t clear to me how we go from the object as “constituted by the subject through intentional acts” to the object as that which is doing the presenting. I’m not saying this doesn’t work, just that the locution is not clear to me.

It's a good question. I'm not convinced that speaking of things presenting themselves to us necessarily invokes agency on their part. Well at least not agency in the sense of intention to present themselves. In the context of chemistry agency is spoken about—we say there are chemical agents, defined as those compounds or admixtures which have toxic effects on humans.

While things don't have the intention to present themselves, they could be said to have the propensity to do so. Language is multivalent. We can speak of things presenting themselves or being presented or being or becoming present to us.

I don't know if I've answered the question adequately but that's all I've got right now. — Janus

:up:

Yes, that’s pretty much where I’m at.

I'd be curious as to what connotations "present" has in this context and how those connotations might contrast with a scientific view on the matter. — wonderer1

With science we force the object to present more of itself than it wants to. :wink: